Toy Fair 2016

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Date	February 13–16, 2016
City	New York, NY
Venue	The Times Center

Toy Fair 2016, hosted in New York City from February 13–16, boasts "over 25,000 attendees, 345,500 square feet of exhibit space, 100,000 products with over 7,000 never before seen in the world, 1200+ exhibitors, [and] 1000 global media representatives."

MediaWiki was invited to Hasbro's Entertainment Brand Press Preview At Toy Fair at The Times Center on Saturday, February 13, and wiki contributors Matt Karpowich and Greg Sepelak attended. Following a presentation starting at 1pm, fan representatives were allowed into Hasbro's product showroom.

Slideshow presentation and Q&A

• The Transformers presentation was the first of the day! It was hosted by designer John Warden and Ben ??? from marketing. Ben remarked on the oddity that the marketing guy was the one in the t-shirt, where the designer was the one in the nice suit.
• Hasbro is well aware of the demand for more Robots in Disguise Decepticon toys, and more are on the way.
• Titan Class Trypticon was shown off... kind of. He's still in the very early sketch and foamcore construction stage. It was noted his slightly smaller stature will be made up for in heft and length. He also will have connector points to attach other Titan Class citybots and such.
• Hasbro's slide show used Rewind and Chromedome's romance in the IDW comics as the lead-in to introducing Deluxe Chromedome. Awwww. Also, woo, progressive!
• Fortress Maximus was brought out on stage, and he's hefty.

Q&A with John

Due to an increase in the number of invited attendees, this year people were split into two groups and let into the showroom at different times, which severely cut into the amount of time given to take pictures. But one doesn't argue with the fire marshal. The half not in the showroom stayed in the presentation room, and were joined by one of the Hasbro presenters for the toyline they were here to cover for a Q&A session. Transformers fans got to ask questions of designer John Warden.

From that Q&A...

• The head-only Titan Master characters are not off the list for possible Deluxe-or-larger toys with full bodies later. The 1987 Headmasters just took priority out of the gate for bigger toys.
• All-new characters are harder to slot into Generations than for the kid-aimed lines due to the expectations of older fans; it's not as difficult to get people worked up for a new version of even a lower-tier character like Skullcruncher because people already know Skullcruncher. New characters generally need a strong fiction-led story behind them to really make them work in well. So new characters are not off the table, but not super-likely.
• Getting the Unite Warriors Groove and Blast Off toys to the US is a possibility, but no plans announced. Both of those toys were done on TakaraTomy's initiative with zero Hasbro input, long after the Combiner Wars Defensor and Bruticus had been designed and put into production.
• Combiner Wars was very retool/recolor heavy as it was a bit of a gamble and had a harder time selling to the top-office folks. Being able to put out a lot of product on fewer steel molds helped ease concerns. Titans Return will not be as heavy on the recolor/retool front.
• When planning the molds, "pretool" heads are sometimes put in without actual, concrete plans to ever use them. Call it a bit of insurance; the cost is minimal to do so, and if a retailer wants a new exclusive, then that new head is waiting to be used nice and easy.
• Speaking of insurance, the Robots in Disguise toyline was partially so main-Autobot-cast-heavy to secure its footing in the younger-aimed audience. Younger kids want versions of the main good-guy cast more, so the line was tilted to provide. Now that the show and toyline have proven themselves and are doing well, they have more freedom to explore more of the show Decepticon cast.
• Titan Trypticon will not have the more horizontal modern tyrannosaurus profile. He also won't have a walking feature, as they felt including that would likely cost out more impressive gimmicks. Whether or not he includes Full-Tilt and Brunt is up in the air.
• Victorion's green got de-saturated due to feedback from the fans. John noted that they talked with the IDW colorists to nail down a shade of green that would work better with the bright red and evoke the comics coloring a bit more.
• Beast Wars isn't getting the big Anniversary push this year so as not to pull away from the Titans Return series. Hasbro is worried about stretching too thin across too many lines, and both Generations and Robots in Disguise have really strong momentum they want to work on. It's possible we'll see Beast Wars themed product later in 2016, plus the idea was floated that as the series really got its momentum more in 1997, that might be when to make the nostalgia-push. Naturally, Masterpiece Optimus Primal was brought up, and it's a possibility for US release, but no confirmation of commitment.
• A question on the fate of a 2017 Transformers convention was basically deflected to PR, with John quickly and politely remarking that he was a toy designer and maybe let's stick to that kind of question.

Showroom

Generations

Leader Class

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Rescue Bots

Rescue Bots was given pretty short shrift, but that's to be expected for an older-fan-aimed event. It only got a passing mention in the slideshow, and it shared floorspace with the rest of the Playskool adventure-toy product... though interestingly, it got the whole center wall of its display space, with the licensed Star Wars and Marvel Comics toys shuffled to the sides.

The booth was staffed by a guy who we failed to get the name of, but notably he did not actually work on the toyline. His notes did not cover everything on display.

The display also had many older toys thrown in, including a few items that we can only assume are toys that were canceled at the 11th hour.

Notes

• It was 3°F degrees in New York City that day. This is not a comedic exaggeration. And that was at 1 in the afternoon. Add in the windtunnel effect the tall buildings of New York give, and yikes. Hasbro actually sent people from Panera Bread to come out and bring hot drinks to the people waiting outside. That was nice!
• This year's presentation seemed much more narrowly-focused across all brands. "Out now/soon" product from previous presentations was more or less nowhere to be seen. Other, later reveals were being held for other conventions so they'd have some scoops (also some stuff just wasn't ready to be shown off yet).
• Attendees were given small bottles of water to drink while there. These bottles were labeled with My Little Pony characters or Robots in Disguise Bumblebee.